Mary Kay LeTourneau listens to testimony during a court hearing in Seattle, on Feb. 6, 1998.

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

The former Seattle school teacher who made headlines around the world in the 1990s after sleeping with — and later marrying — a 12-year-old student was briefly jailed Monday after missing a court appearance in connection with her driving without a license.

Mary Kay Letourneau, 51, was booked into King County Jail early Monday and released at 1:05 p.m. after posting $5,000 bail, law enforcement officials said.

Letourneau became infamous in 1997 after reports of her sexual relationship with Vili Fualaau — at that time one of her pupils — were splashed on tabloid covers across America.

The lurid affair — which started when Letourneau was 34 and Fualaau was 12 — set off a media firestorm. It was later chronicled in tell-all books and a television movie.

Letourneau — pregnant with Fualaau's child — was sentenced to prison in late 1997 after being convicted of rape. She was paroled in January 1998 and barred from contact with her former pupil.

But less than a month later, the two were caught together in her car at 3 a.m. — and Letourneau was sent back to serve the rest of her seven-year term in prison.

And that's where she bore Fualaau's second child.

Letourneau was released from prison in 2004 — and just a year later, she and Fualaau got hitched. They have two children.